


Dear Friend

by a_case_for_wonder



Series: Royai Week 2020 [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Inspired by She Loves Me (Musical), Letters, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Pen Pals, Royai Week 2020, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn, here goes nothing, kind of?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24610333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_case_for_wonder/pseuds/a_case_for_wonder
Summary: In which Riza and Roy unknowingly become anonymous pen pals, and fall in love twice.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Series: Royai Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785040
Comments: 11
Kudos: 18





	Dear Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is my first work in this fandom, and I was going to wait until it was done to start posting, but. Then I found out that Royai week was a thing and Right Now, and that the prompt was letters, and it was too perfect not to jump at the chance. So, I guess I'm doing this thing now :) 
> 
> Consider this a preview to what will eventually be a longer fic, a secret pan pals AU inspired by the Broadway musical "She Loves Me"

The craziest thing is how early it starts. Not before everything, not before they know each other, but. Early. Before the Homonclui, before the Elrics, before his plans to make Fuhrer. Before Ishval. Back then, Riza Hawkeye is just an orphan, just a young girl fresh into Amestris' Military Academy, determined to make something of herself, to be the best she can be. Roy Mustang is still so far from the man he will become, one day, not yet the Hero of Ishval, barely even the Flame Alchemist, still a Major sure the military can make the world a better place. But that’s when it starts. 

* * *

It starts, as so many of the better and more troublesome things in Roy’s life have, at the bar. He only has a few days’ leave, so he’s just stopped in for a quick hello, one drink at most. Aunt Chris takes one look at him, purses her lips around her cigarette, and orders him upstairs with more unbrokered certainty than some Generals. A few of the girls are there, and before he knows it he’s being shuffled into Aunt Chris’ overstuffed blue armchair, a cup of strongly spiked tea between his hands, with firm orders not to move “until he doesn’t look like he’s about to pass out from stress,” apparently.

Leave it to his sisters to make him feel like an old man and a little kid again all at once, and in less than five minutes flat. Still, he knows they mean well, and truth be told it’s good to put his feet up. Good to be somewhere he doesn’t feel watched. Madame Christmas’s is about as good a safehouse as they come, and for a few moments he feels like he can finally relax his guard. Which is of course, just the opening they are looking for. 

“So, Roy,” Vanessa grins, plopping down on the nearby sofa, “What’s up? What brings you home looking like so much dogshit?” She’s smiling sharply, but there’s concern in her eyes, in the tea and whiskey and the best chair. 

So he tells her, a little. About his recent State Alchemist exam, about everyone’s concern over the brewing conflict to the East. Eventually the tea is gone, but at some point she’s refilled his cup with straight whiskey despite the fact that he’s never been much of a drinker. He hopes there’s still a spare bed, because at this rate he isn’t getting himself home tonight. 

“I know what your problem is,” she says sagely. “You’re lonely.” 

That catches him off guard. He blinks up at her from the depths of his cup. Lonely? Roy is a lot of things - overdriven, selfish, irritating at times. But lonely? “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve got friends - Hughes, and Havoc and-”

“That isn’t good enough,” she cuts him off. “Military buddies don’t count, Roy. Thinking about strategy and alchemy and war all the time is what’s gotten you into this mess. No,” her tone is final. “you need friends outside of work. People you can talk to about… girls, or something.”

“Girls,” he deadpans. 

“Don’t you worry, Roy-o, I’ve got just the thing,” she assures him, smile sharp as the dagger he knows she keeps in her bedside drawer. Then there’s a newspaper clipping being stuffed into his hand. He reads it, frown deepening the further into the little notice that he gets. 

“It’s perfect!” she declares. “It’s anonymous, so you don’t have to worry about them being interested in you because of the military or anything, and you don’t have to do that 'charming but emotionally unavailable' thing you do constantly. You might make a friend!” She leans close, whispers mischievously. “You might fall in love…” 

He nearly throws the clipping back at her, but not without humor. Love. As if that’s a problem that even ranks on the scale of things he’s got going on right now. But she means well, so he reads it over anyway. 

“ _Dear Friend_. A...pen pal program?”  


* * *

“Becs, I am not getting a pen pal,” Riza sighs, dropping her head into her hands. Her best friend means well, of course, but this is just - it’s ridiculous, is what it is. She’s Riza Hawkeye, best shot in her class at the Academy. She works hard, she keeps her nose down, she gets shit done. It’s who she is. Or at least, it’s who she’s become. So she’s been a little withdrawn lately. This hardly seems like a useful solution.

“You need friends, Riza.” 

“I have you.”

“Other friends,” Rebecca says with an eye roll. “More friends. Maybe a boyfriend, even.”

At that Riza just scoffs. She dates. Well, she goes on dates. Rebecca insists you can’t call it “dating” if she never sees the same guy more than twice, but what does she know? In the end it doesn’t matter. Rebecca is her best friend because she’s as stubborn as Riza is. By the end of their lunch, they’ve sent the inquiry. 

A week later, she has the address for a PO Box in East City, and sits down to write.

_Dear Friend._

“This feels stupid,” she tells the plant on her windowsill. It feels a little silly, talking to a plant, but not as silly as writing this stupid thing. “I don’t know this guy, and he doesn’t know me. What the hell am I doing this for?” 

The plant, unsurprisingly, does not answer. Maybe when she graduates she’ll get a dog. Riza sighs, and turns back to her letter. 

_Dear friend,_

_We aren’t supposed to share names. That’s probably for the best. To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m writing you, other than to appease a friend of mine. She thinks I’m lonely. Maybe I am, but I’m not convinced that writing to a stranger is the way to solve it._

Riza frowns down at the beginnings of her letter. You’re a charmer, Reez, she hears Rebecca’s voice in her head, fond. Riza squared her shoulders. She can do this. It’s just a stupid letter. 

_I’m afraid I don’t really know where to start. It’s true that I don’t have many close friends. I was an isolated kid, so maybe I never developed the knack for it. I have a demanding job - well, I’m still in school, but it feels like a job already - and it doesn’t lend itself to an active social calendar. Frankly, it doesn’t lend itself to prioritizing myself at all. But I have time enough to write some letters. So here is the first one. I hope to hear from you._

_Sincerely,  
Your Dear Friend_

It is an objectively terrible letter. God, it sounds like she doesn’t even want to be writing it. Well, maybe whoever gets it will be so disappointed he’ll never write her back, and she won’t have to worry about it anymore. At least she can tell Rebecca she tried. She folds the letter, marks the envelope, and posts it before she can talk herself out of it. 

Then it’s time to go to class, and her mind is full of procedure, statues, rules and regulations, and more troubling news about the rising tensions in Ishval. By the time she crashes into her bunk that night, the letter is almost entirely forgotten.  


* * *

_Dear Friend,_

_Hey, you wrote me first! That’s a good start. I was expecting this to feel stranger than it does, but I liked getting your letter, even if it told me next to nothing about you. (Next time!) Honestly, I got talked into this by a friend, too. He means well, but he’s been insufferable since he met his latest girlfriend. I’d tell him to hurry up and marry her, but I think that would somehow make it worse. I agree that we should remain anonymous. My job values security pretty highly, so I probably won’t share a lot of details about work with you._

Roy pauses over the letter. He really can’t talk about work. Even what isn’t classified makes him too easy to identify, and there’s something uneasy about the idea of that, so soon. He won’t even mention alchemy, to start with. What is left, then? Girls, Vanessa had suggested, apparently not considering his pen pal being a girl. Hughes, who had been the one to finally convince Roy to submit his address after Roy had made the mistake of bringing it up to him, had suggested "literally anything other than work, Mustang." But work was his life, these days. Outside of that, what was left? 

_Do you like Jazz? My Aunt got me a record player last Christmas, and I’ve been trying to pick up a new record every few weeks, when I can. We had a lot of music growing up, so it reminds me a little of home. That’s probably why she got it for me, now that I’m writing it down. Apparently everyone in my life knew I was a lonely, homesick bastard before I did. Funny how that works. What kind of music do you like?_

_Sincerely,  
Your Dear Friend _

There. That hadn’t been so bad. He’d worried that he wouldn’t be able to come off in writing. Roy can schmooze with the best of the military, but it’s mostly an act. And these letters don’t feel like they should be an act. Frankly, he thinks he’s more eloquent in written form than whoever this Dear Friend of his is, or at least more forthcoming. 

He mails the letter quietly from a public post office a few blocks from East City Command. He doesn’t tell Maes a thing about it.  


* * *

He likes Jazz. Riza considers this, stretching out fingers stiff and sore from a long day on the firing range. They’ve solidified her track. She’s found her place here, training to be a sniper with a secondary specialization in intelligence gathering. She knows at the rate she’s progressing, she won’t be kept from the front lines for long. The thought is both terrifying and exhilarating. This is what she became a soldier for, after all.

And she won’t tell him, her _Dear Friend,_ any of that. She wonders, from his own reticence, if he is in the military as well, or something similar. It doesn’t matter. They’ve agreed not to talk about it, and - and she wants to keep writing him. It felt stupid the first time, but getting his letter in return had been a brighter spot in her week than she’d like to admit. She only waits a day before sitting down and penning her next one. 

_...There wasn’t much music in my house. My father was an academic, and never seemed to have time for such things. But a friend of mine has been taking me dancing, and I do like it. Jazz is good for dancing. But I think if I were listening alone I’d like something else. I’m not sure what. Something more organized, I suppose. There was a little orchestra that used to play at the festivals in town, and I remember wishing I could take them home with me to study to. Something like that maybe._

_I do like to read, though. I haven’t as much, since I’ve been at school, but I read all sorts of things when I was younger. Not fairytales, but stories about real people. There’s so much world out there, you know? I only hope I get to see more of it, one day..._

Soon enough, she’s writing him nearly every week. He’s- well, odd is the first word that comes to mind. His words are by turns awkward and effortlessly charming. He likes jazz. He loves dancing but never does because he doesn’t like dancing with strangers. He doesn’t read much, but he still owns a book of fairytales his parents gave him when he was too young to read it. He seems… sweet. Driven, but sweet. 

Without really thinking about it, his letters become a kind of sacred space her week, something just her own that she looks forward to each time. He tells her about his office mate that won’t shut up about his girlfriend. She tells him maybe if he could find himself a date, he wouldn’t have to complain so much. 

[ _What about you?_ ] It’s clearly framed as a joke, and she smiles, rolls her eyes at the words on paper. 

_...We’re practically strangers. You don’t even know what I look like..._

[ _What you look like? Come on, Dear Friend. Somehow I didn’t think you were so shallow._ ] 

She tells him about having ice cream for the first time - she never had it growing up, and Rebecca had been so aghast upon that discovery she’d dragged Riza out for a dish that very moment - and he makes fun of her when she admits vanilla is her favorite flavor. 

_...You told me you wear black slacks and white shirts on your days off. Your favorite book is a children’s fairytale collection. If one of us is hopelessly boring, it’s you..._

[ _I think you’ll find those traits to be practical and sentimental, respectively, thank you._ ] 

_...If you say so, Friend..._

And he is. That’s the strangest part. Her friend, that is. They’ve never met and likely never will, but she considers him as much a friend as Rebecca or anyone else she’s come close to at the Academy. He seems to enjoy the books she recommends. She laughs when she reads his terrible jokes. It goes on, and just like that, they are. Friends.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I've been having a blast getting into this fandom after binging Brotherhood on Netflix during quarantine, and I'm so excited to be inspired enough to start writing works of my own! Comments and kudos always appreciated, I want to know what you think!!
> 
> The rest of this fic will be written and posted eventually, but I'm going to try my hand at this week of prompts thing and see what happens first (not to mention my WIPs from other fandoms...) Thanks again!! <3


End file.
